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Chat Control "brings high risks to society" say privacy experts

Date:
Wed, 19 Nov 2025 16:54:25 +0000

Description:
While welcoming voluntary CSAM scanning, scientists warn that some aspects of
the revised bill "still bring high risks to society without clear benefits 
for children."

FULL STORY

Chat control legislation "still brings high risks to society without clear
benefits for children," according to an open letter recently published by a
group of European academics. 

After failing once again to obtain the required majority, Denmark has
withdrawn the mandatory scanning clause included in the original Chat Control
bill, making it voluntary instead. 

The move was initially hailed as a victory by privacy and security experts,
but it was short-lived, with people warning that the text could still
introduce mandatory scanning " through the backdoor ." 

A group of 18 top cybersecurity and privacy academics from Europe has
reiterated these concerns in an open letter published this week. 

The letter addressed the European Council two days ahead of the November 19
meeting with the Committee of Permanent Representatives, with adoption
expected as early as December 8, 2025.

Expanding scope concerns privacy advocates

Originally, only URLs, pictures, and videos were going to be the target of
CSAM scanning. Now, however, lawmakers have widened the scope of the bill to
also include text, in a move that echoes previous versions of the bill. 

In their open-letter, academics warn that broadening the scope of the
legislation will lead to unintended consequences. Notably, they argue that
"expanding the scope of detection only opens the door to surveil and examine 
a larger part of conversations, without any guarantee of better protection." 

They also highlight the potential of false positives, writing: "current AI
technology is far from being precise enough to undertake these tasks with
guarantees for the necessary level of accuracy."

Concerning mandatory age verification

The new proposal would also lead to age verification being introduced on app
stores and encrypted messaging services like WhatsApp. According to the
experts, this not only fails to help the main objective of the bill, it also
exposes everyone to new privacy and security risks. 

"Age assessment cannot be performed in a privacy-preserving way with current
technology due to reliance on biometric, behavioral or contextual
information," they argue. "In fact, it incentives (children's) data 
collection and exploitation." 

Experts warn that even adopting an alternative approach  such as using
official documents for age verification  would cut off a "substantial 
fraction of the population" from essential online services. 

What's more, these provision would be easy to bypass. They "can be easily
evaded, by using providers outside the EU or VPNs to avoid geolocation
checks," experts note.

Voluntary detection still comes with risks 

It appears that shifting CSAM scanning from mandatory to voluntary has been
enough to gain bipartisan agreements among lawmakers and end over three years
of failed negotiations. 

But many cryptography experts and data scientists are still convinced that
even voluntary detection will harm security and privacy, particularly due to
the belief that the technology is not currently accurate or effective enough. 

All in all, "on-device detection technologies cannot be considered a
reasonable tool to mitigate risks, as there is no proven benefit, while the
potential for harm and abuse is enormous," they conclude.

The open letter seems to have already influenced today's meeting. 

As a leaked cable shared by a Former MEP for the German Pirate Party and
digital rights jurist, Patrick Breyer, shows, EU governments are removing 
Chat Control from today's COREPER agenda because a majority has not yet been
reached. 

This could seriously delay the adoption of the new rules, expected as early 
as December 8, 2025. 

======================================================================
Link to news story:
https://www.techradar.com/vpn/vpn-privacy-security/chat-control-brings-high-ri
sks-to-society-say-privacy-experts

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